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Your real tax rate: 40%

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Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#111

Post by randallsquared »

AlisdairO wrote: post #105
randallsquared wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure that's the case, since I'm not sure if government-funded research was more of an effect or a cause of the decline of privately-funded research.

Really, though, it's hard to find credible reasons why companies would fund fundamental (say) physics research, isn't it? The benefits of such research are often felt decades down the line.

Companies and individuals have certainly funded activities with decades-later payoffs before. If it's not currently done as much, it may be partly because the decades-hence future is more uncertain than it used to be, for both technological and legislative reasons. Again, I don't see an empirically obvious answer.

However, I think there might be a naming problem, here. If it seems likely to have practical applications at some point, it's not "fundamental" or "pure" research anymore. Companies doing research into quantum computers or molecular assembly are certainly doing so because they expect to make a profit on it eventually, but the very fact that they have this expectation means that it's disqualified from fundamental research. I still think that there are examples of companies funding general research on the assumption that something will come of it, but it's hard to disentangle the effects of government. The most prominent example, Bell Labs, was run by a government-supported monopoly, for example.

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#112

Post by ovi256 »

jules wrote: post #108
lazyjeff wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish it was $2.50 in Seattle. I'd even be overjoyed to pay the Bellingham price of $2.82. I paid $3.11 to $3.17 the last two times I filled up last week.

Don't complain. Here in the Netherlands it's around $7.6 per gallon.

$6.31 is Paris at the cheapest ever station that I never heard of because it must be so out of the way. $6.90 seems to be average.

Sure would love me some $3 gas.

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#113

Post by Elite »

alok-g wrote: post #96

If I buy something for $100, I would pay sales tax on it. But is that really it for purchases? Isn't the government collecting taxes at several other points as the good is being made and brought to market? Taxes on raw materials, on components making the product, taxes on shipping, etc. All in all, if I buy something for $100, how much is the tax collected by the government (in addition to what is taken from my incom…

Sounds like an excellent thesis for an economics grad student.

I'd love to see this data in an easy to read format for a variety of goods and industries

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#114

Post by dotBen »

In UK the income tax for high-rate earners (anyone earning about $70k) is 40%. As in, that's what is reflected in your pay check.

Then you add on council tax (equiv of state tax although it's calculated based on value of house), VAT (sales tax, 17.5% moving to 20% next year), property tax (only at sale and if you own more than one), and all the sin taxes (cigarettes and gas is WAY higher cos it's mostly tax).

I like living in California and America... the taxes are so low here!

(caveat: yes we get health care paid for in UK which I have to pay for here)

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#115

Post by run4yourlives »

kgroll wrote: post #64
run4yourlives wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all forms of sales tax, the devil is in the details. The differences are not in the concept but how one chooses to administer the particulars. Where and if you choose to credit low income, what "sales" you choose to tax or not, and the overall tax rates themselves. FairTax, in my personal opinion isn't the best example of where to draw these lines. It is rightly criticized for that, but that says nothing about the…

I'd be really interested in seeing the numbers from Buffet's assertion. Could you provide a link please? (Thanks!)

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ec...

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#116

Post by yummyfajitas »

VBprogrammer wrote: post #88
rubashov wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a result of their tax rate and size of government? That's ridiculous. Denmark is wealthy and comfortable because it's full of Danes. I bet you Danes in the US are even wealthier and more comfortable than Danes in Denmark.

Because America is the greatest country in the world people outside America couldn't possibly be happy with the way they do things?

To be fair, in the few cases where I've seen good data, most groups do better in the US than in their native countries.

For instance, Asian Americans have average income of $65,000. Japan, the richest country in Asia, has average income of about $40,000. Japanese Americans also live 2 years longer than Japanese.

Swedish Americans are also considerably richer than Swedes, as I discovered today: http://super-economy.blogspot.com/2010/03/super-economy-in-o...

Like it or not, ethnicity plays a big role in many social measures. The US is very diverse, and certain groups drag our averages down (groups that are very small in Europe and Asia).

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#117

Post by [deleted] »

kenjackson wrote: post #110
rada wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tax arbitrage means using the difference in tax rates to make extra money. If the tax rate when you contribute to a tax-deferred investment account is higher than the tax rate when you pull the money out, voila, you've profited from tax arbitrage. So I am not sure why you are thinking of income vs. other taxes. The authors are simply saying, if you are a high earner in a top federal tax bracket, it really pays to put…

OK, I thought the takeaways were implying that you were finding some inefficiency in the system. Rather they were simply saying that retirement accounts work as advertised. Just an odd takeaway, since that's the expressly stated purpose of most retirement accounts. But fair enough.

[deleted]

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#118

Post by chime »

bretthoerner wrote: post #9
chime wrote: post #4

I've used 50% as a conservative estimate for all my back-of-the-napkin calculations for years and it has served me well, especially in consulting projects. Sure I can lower that by showing expenses etc. but in the general sense, if I charge $100/hour, what I'm really doing is enabling myself to spend $50/hour in the future. The true benefit of this is that I don't have to feel worried about over/under charging my cli…

> The true benefit of this is that I don't have to feel worried about over/under charging my clients. Why not? If you could (should) be charging $120 then that'd be $60 of future spending.

I charge $100 because I really feel the effort is worth $50 to me and the client won't pay more than $100. Think of it this way: The lower bound is set by how much I feel the effort is worth after taxes. The upper bound is set by how much I think/know the client will pay. If half of the upper bound is less than my lower bound, I don't do it. This way I don't under-charge.

By over-charge, I meant to say that even though I feel my effort is truly worth $50 after taxes, I don't have to worry about charging $100, because I'm not really over-charging the client since half of $100 is going to taxes. Without taking 50% taxes into account (which is what a lot of people do), asking $100 for something I truly feel is worth only $50 feels like overcharging.

Over-charging new clients is never a personal issue because they can always say no and walk away. But over-charging existing clients can cause you to lose a steady stream of income, especially after you've invested time and effort to establish a relationship and understanding of their needs.

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#119

Post by FrankBlack »

alexyim wrote: post #59
_delirium wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The people who do live in Denmark seem pretty happy about doing so, though ( http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2006/11/061113093726.ht... ). One reason might be that they're fairly wealthy to begin with, so it's taking a large percentage out of a large pie (Denmark's per-capita GDP is ~DKK 375,000 = ~$62,000). The social safety net is also rather strong as a result of the government's large amount of income, and i…

What does the US have?

Bombs. Lots and lots of bombs. And, apparently, we love to use them. Prisons. We're good at those. Oh, and flags. We like to wave those a lot, too. Especially about the fact that we are "free" compared to those "socialist" menaces around the world. So, we pay an average of 40% in taxes, but does that pay for your higher education or your kid's higher education? Not likely. Does it pay for your health care? Probably not all of it (in some cases, none at all). Does it pay for daycare? Good retirement? So, when you factor that and a lot more into the equation, some countries don't have it so bad. The sad thing is, we could be doing SO well here if we just tweaked things a bit. Tweaking, apparently, is out of the question,

Re: Your real tax rate: 40%

#120

Post by anamax »

Retric wrote: post #63
anamax wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could always try the military... you've got one hell of an expensive lean, mean fighting machine there. I'm pretty sure it would still be as good for defence at a fraction of the cost. The US military is about 6% of Federal spending and didn't jump significantly during Iraq. For example, Iraq cost about $1T over 8 years. At least one of the stimulus cost about that, and we've had several since 2007. The long te…

It's closer to 1/4 of total spending. Out of $3.552 trillion in total federal spending: Defense-related expenditures outside of the Department of Defense constitute between $216 billion and $361 billion in additional spending, bringing the total for defense spending to between $880 billion and $1.03 trillion in fiscal year 2010.[6] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_budget_of_the_United_S... PS: The range of costs…

The "outside the defense department budget" numbers are sketchy at best.

Interest on debt for past wars isn't something that can be cut.

"State Department financing of foreign arms sales" is diplomacy, not military spending. (It may be dumb diplomacy, but it's diplomacy.)

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